New People’s Movement ? November 22, 2018

FORMER SINN FÉIN TD Peadar Tóibín has signed up two members to his new party since resigning last week.
A Sinn Féin councillor in Kildare Ide Cussen resigned from the party earlier today.
Former Cork Sinn Féin councillor Ger Keohane has also signed up.

There’s a series of Nationwide meetings kicking off in December
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Join with us to build a new movement throughout Ireland, one that fights for Unity, Economic Justice and protecting the most vulnerable. Please share far and wide. pic.twitter.com/YvE1cC8HWP

I imagine that other Councillors may well be unveiled at these meetings (Kildare, Dublin, Tralee, Cavan, Navan, Dundalk, Wexford, Mayo and Monaghan.) among the locations .
No word of an event in the North yet.

Well, Toibín isn’t making the mistake others have made before of waiting waiting and allowing events to slip away. He’s a little bit of interest from the media at the moment, and clearly he intends to publicise this ‘new’ movement. IEL, what’s your thoughts on how this helps him in terms of retaining his seat and whether there’s any broader appeal? Interesting he’s keeping clear so far of the Mattie M’s and Ronan M’s of the world (emphasis on so far).

He should keep his seat. He is right in steering clear of the likes of McGrath and Mullen (wasn’t he supposed to be setting up a party also) . He will also have to be very careful in who he accepts, be it anti vaxers, crazy pro life loons and so on.
It seems that it’s a Centre Left Pro Life Party that he is setting up.
A few ex SFers is a good start, he’ll need to attract others outside of that background. I really wonder will he be unveiling an ex FFer or the like at some of his meetings.
I’m surprised that there are no dates in the North yet, especially with the Local Elections due there next year.
Party won’t be huge but has potential for a few TDs and in the current climate possible coalition partners?

He must have been planning this for a while. Will be interesting to see how it develops.
I read that Clones in the Dáil? poster and my first thought was what has he got against that lovely Border town?

Not really, but he does seem to have prepared a wider platform. There’s an element of pro life FF voters that he might attract. If the FF/ SDLP thing goes ahead there may be an element of the SDLP tempted too.

Some SDLP people at the FG conference at the weekend. Talk of one of them being a Euro election candidate down south.
Think it’s time the SDLP dissolved and let them all go hither and thither to FF, FG, realSDLP, Alliance, SF and Tóibin’s yoke.

So it could become the vehicle of choice for lots of ex-SF councillors and members. Thing is though, they are all ex-SF for loads of different reasons, mostly local rows ultimately around who will be the local top dog/candidate.

But say he gets a load of ex-SFers, some ‘pro-life’, some ‘pro-choice’ and no-one else (some of those people mentioned as attending Tóibin-supported events left SF for other reasons than the termination of pregnancy issue). Then it’s more than a pro-life SF splinter group – it’s a mixum-gatherum ex-SF splinter group!

All those SFers who left over the last long number of years. Nothing became of pretty much any of them. Those lads in Wexford, the one who said Doherty reminded him of an insurance salesman :), and all the rest – they all pretty much disappeared without trace. SF seemed able to let them go, put up new people and keep the vote.
This is the biggest test now – Tóibín definitely has some heft. Still can’t see it amounting to much more than him though.

I do not intend to speak on some of these amendments for very long but I felt I had to come into the House to object to the racist stereotyping in the amendment and in the contributions of some speakers. The phrase was used last night—–

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein sic)

We are two minutes in, a Cheann Comhairle and the Deputies opposite are calling names again. It is incredible that we cannot have a debate without calling names

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

The Deputy put—–

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein sic)

The effort to call names is to try to close down—-

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

If the Deputy tables an amendment that includes the word “race”, he will be challenged about it.

It is not unreasonable to talk about India and China that way.
Racial stereotyping is stupid thing to say given the facts on the ground there.
Or are we supposed to say the wholesale termination of pregnancies because they are girls or forcing a one child policy is out of bounds for discussion.

I support the abortion legislation. It’s a good thing it’s here but that doesn’t mean I must pretend India and China aren’t the way they are.

It was hardly out of bounds for discussion, as the below quoted paragraph from Coppinger (once Toibin let her speak) makes clear. What is wrong is making use of gender inequities in sections of society (sex-selection isn’t universal in India and China; and not exclusive to Asia, nor is misogynistic views like the ones that created the Magdalene laundries) as a tool to restrict abortion availability not only to people from these backgrounds (through racial profiling) but in a wider sense by creating barriers both bureaucratic and intimidatory like the ones implied by the Amendments Toibin and co. proposed.

The other issue is sex selection. I read studies of an imbalance in the ratio between men and women in societies. The fact that sons are favoured in cultures is wrong and shameful, but it stems from the inferior position of girls and women in our world, whom the proposers of these amendments never show any interest in once the child is born. Some of that imbalance can occur after girls are born. When families are poor, girls can get less food, education and so on. There can also be infanticide if the proposers would prefer that prospect. Sex selection for abortion is horrendous, but the Deputies need to cop on. We have a system where women are utterly inferior, taking the planet as a whole. The proposers again care nothing about that.

And incidentally, here below is the amendment that Toibin was speaking on in the initial quote above in this sequence.

In page 10, lines 32 and 33, to delete all words from and including “that” in line 32 down to and including line 33 and substitute the following:

“that—(a) the pregnancy concerned has not exceeded 12 weeks of pregnancy, and

(b) a termination of the pregnancy concerned is not being sought because of the sex or race of the foetus concerned or because of any condition or disability affecting the foetus concerned.”.

I think it’s fairly hard to see how that combined with the other amendments seeking documentation of ethnicity aren’t trying to institute racial profiling of women seeking abortions based on the racial stereotype that said women might be prone to seeking sex-selective abortions.